- 著者
-
川﨑 佳哉
- 出版者
- 日本映像学会
- 雑誌
- 映像学 (ISSN:02860279)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.94, pp.5-23, 2015
<p> After making <i>Citizen Kane</i> (1941), Orson Welles directed <i>The Magnificent Ambersons</i> (1942), which was an adaptation of Booth Tarkington's 1918 novel. While <i>Citizen Kane</i> is full of political implications, <i>The Magnificent Ambersons</i>, which tells a story of an aristocratic family which is destroyed because of a new economic system, does not seem to deal with any political issues. In this paper, however, I reveal a hidden political meaning in <i>The Magnificent Ambersons</i> by focusing on the problem of viewpoint in the film. First, I show that the film's viewpoint shifts from outside to inside of Ambersons' house after a brief prologue. This means that the spectator sees the film's main narrative from the viewpoints of the members of Ambersons. As their fortune declines from the middle of the film, they become impoverished and fall one after another onto the ground. At this point, I suggest that the members of Ambersons become ghostly figures who look at the growing city from below. Analyzing the POV shot that appears near end of the film, I argue that this shot and the film's final image represent specters' ghostly viewpoints through which the spectator looks at the devastating effects of modernization. Finally, I examine the significance of these specters' eyes for recognizing "the movement of history" in 1942.</p>